Your Golden Opportunity Is Comeing Very Soon- RJ Shaughnessy

RJ Shaughnessy was kind enough to send me a copy of his new self published book- Your Golden Opportunity Is Comeing Very Soon. I wasn't familiar with his work, so I was quite apprehensive at first- what if I didn't like it? Fortunately, a quick review of his website revealed that was certainly not the case, nevertheless- reader beware, in the interest of full disclosure, this review bears the onus of blatant, free product procurement! So much for the scruples...

I generally don't like night photography, the "atmosphere" and shortened tonal values don't much do it for me. I also don't usually go for people who go by the initials of their first two names. Fortunately, I'm an open minded kinda guy cause RJ seems quite the nice all around and his work is the kind of stuff I'll come back to look at- repeatedly.

It's nice to see someone taking a chance with black and white these days- and making it work to their advantage. Everything in Opportunity is either bent, broken, scratched, cracked or scuffed. The flash accentuates form and minimizes distraction. The photographs appear both primitively simple, and elegantly refined- no easy feat. They're also very reminiscent of what B&W was doing for oh, such a brief period in the mid seventies, freeing itself of the documentary aesthetic and going into more conceptual waters concentrating on form and minimalism- before it got cold cocked by that distracting color revolution thang.

I once said basically the same about Jason Evans' work, and he corrected me saying... well, actually I forget exactly what it was he said. I just found it curious that he was correcting me when I had seen the stuff in person- at the same time he was busy being a prepubescent. But that's what I get for being twenty, not writing down names, and thinking that things will last forever in an analogue B&W world. But I digress...

Perhaps RJ's work will spawn yet another clarion call for The Great B&W Revival, I say- let it come of it's own damn accord. In the meantime, just enjoy and marvel at his LA awakened from mid slumber; you won't find the usual flashes of its broken humanity, just the illuminated detritus of its everyday, pedestrian architecture, looming about like those strange, shape shifting invertebrates that inhabit the ocean's vast, dark depths.